Don’t Forget What Grandma Told You: Be Grateful
Just when it seems like things are letting up, we find ourselves in the midst of the next storm. This can be said for our current events, as well as our day to day lives. The world has battled COVID and we were starting to emerge on the other side with a hope for “normalcy”, only to be greeted by the onset of a new conflict, war. This shows my point on a larger scale but it is not always as earth changing. This can also take the form of feeling like you can’t catch a break from the stresses of work and life. This can become an exhausting existence which is what many people have felt the past couple years. The constant flood of negativity becomes heavy and overwhelming. I would like to offer a solution to this problem: remember to count your blessings and be grateful for what you have in life. This is not a call for false positivity and to ignore problems in our lives. It is instead a choice for us to make to remind ourselves that there are good people and things that take place in our lives and we need to be deliberate in giving them our mental attention as well.
Changing our way of thinking and choosing to intentionally focus on things and people that we are grateful for may not seem like a strong enough counterbalance to all the negativity that we experience in the world. On one hand you might be right but on the other hand by being consistent in our change of perspective, we can actually rewire our brains to naturally notice things in a more optimistic way. This type of change won’t happen overnight, but it is possible with effort and persistence.
So how does it work? How can you implement this into your life? It is a simple practice of pausing to identify positive moments that occur throughout your day and then reflecting on them. An easy way to start is by identifying someone who has helped you or had an impact on you recently and reflect on what it meant to you to be helped or impacted by them. This helps us to relive that moment and re experience the emotions we felt during the moment which will give us the dose of positive emotion that we need in our lives. If you are really looking to get a double dose of positive emotion and share the wealth you can, take this one step further and reach out to the person you reflected on and tell them thank you for how they helped or impacted you. This can help bring positive emotions to that person, but also strength the relationship. It’s a simple win-win interaction!
Another way this can work is by choosing specific times to stop and reflect on your day to find the moments that made you grateful. These don’t have to be huge moments. They can be simple moments that make us feel grateful, or happy. Research shows that there are more positive events that take place in our lives than negative events, but we become almost blind to the positive events. This is why we need to be more intentional in focusing on the moments that make us feel joy or gratitude. For me, writing is a vital piece to helping me reflect on these positive moments in life. It allows me to fully process them and reconnect to the moment and the people that were involved. It also allows me to look back on them on tough days or as an opportunity to stop and smell the roses from time to time.
Life can be rough and unfair. It can also be amazing and awesome. It is easy to get bogged down by the stress and challenges of life which cause us to forget to notice and appreciate the awesome things that take place in our lives. If we want to be able to continue our pursuits for the long haul, then we need to make sure we are fueling our emotional fuel reserves. Gratitude is like rocket fuel that we use to refill our tanks with. Gratitude is the type of fuel that helps us sustain living life on the offense and reach our full potential.
I hope you all are well during this time of turmoil and uncertainty. I want you all to know that I am grateful for you all and your continued support of Always In Pursuit.
-Daren